When you began your twice-weekly column for the Times at the beginning
of the year, I promised I would read every column and periodically offer
constructive criticism, including high praise if I thought it warranted. You
are probably wondering why you have not heard from me in several months,
Professor. It only occurred to me on Sunday, while reading your column,
“Taking Care of Business,” that I have been negligent in giving you the
constructive criticism I promised. The reason is that, while I continue to
read each and every one of your offerings on the state of the political
economy, I find them uniformly boring. Twice on Sunday I nodded off while
attempting to traverse the 750 words you wrote about how the Republicans in
Congress were cutting business taxes and you did not like it one bit. There is
corruption in high places, you told us in the lead paragraph: “Cynics
tell us that money has completely corrupted our politics, that in the last
election big corporations basically bought themselves a government that will
serve their interests. Several related events last week suggest that the
cynics have a point.”

Your Exhibit A on the corruption front is that some Republicans including
President Bush do not want to fire all the security workers in the airports
who work for private companies and replace them with security workers who are
hired by the government. Corruption!! Zzzzzz.

Exhibit B: House Republicans have passed a tax bill that refunds all those
taxes that businesses have paid over the last 15 years as an alternative
minimum tax. Some cynics might say, Professor, that the government had been
corrupted when it levied a tax on all those companies that did not owe any
taxes, on the grounds that everyone should pay a tax whether they owe taxes or
not. You have a different point of view, and that’s fine. But you are
supposed to be an economic genius, hired by the world’s greatest newspaper
away from your professorial post at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Your biggest complaint on economic grounds is that the corporations which are
going to get these refunds are not going to spend them and besides, “there
are no strings tied to these gifts: If the companies want to, say, pay huge
bonuses to top executives, they can.” Zzzzzz.

Exhibit C: “The Bush administration announced that the Interior Department
would no longer be able to veto mining projects on public land. You might
think that extracting minerals from public land, without even paying a
royalty, was a privilege rather than an entitlement; but in today’s
Washington, financial might apparently makes right.” I’ll admit this
sounds pretty corrupt, Dr. Krugman, but I think you missed the point entirely.
Going back at least to Thomas Jefferson and maybe even to George Washington,
the mining industry has been getting permits on public lands in procedures
that facilitate their ability to mine. In one of his 11th hour executive
orders, President Clinton gave the Interior Secretary the power to veto
permits even after they met all the conditions for the permit given them by
the states, a payoff to Al Gore’s buddies who want to shut down mining
altogether because it contributes to global warming. President Bush repealed
the order. An Interior spokesman explained, “The Clinton regulation
essentially told mining companies, ‘You've cleared all 10 hurdles, but we're
saying you lose anyway.’” Kind of like the alternative minimum tax, huh?

Now I know you can do better, professor. The economy is in a terrible mess.
The stock market continues to fall. Poverty stalks many parts of the world
economy. And I read your column expecting to find answers, recommendations,
solutions. But you are putting me to sleep. Checking back, I find I snoozed
through your October 24 column, “Ban the Bonds,” where you blasted
somebody’s idea of issuing “war bonds” to finance higher defense
spending. Instead, you said we should tax the rich. On October 14, “Harvest
of Lemons,” you celebrated three economists who had to share a Nobel Prize
in economics, apparently because the Swedish Academy has run out of candidates
who are worth the prize on their own. None of the economists seem to know why
the economy is in a terrible mess, why the stock market continues to fall, or
why poverty stalks many parts of the world economy.

Maybe that’s why you feel so happy in their company, Prof. But I have to
tell you, if you can’t manage to keep me awake in the next few months, I may
go into permanent hibernation as far as your column is concerned. Zzzzzz.